


Even Kings Can

by Ravenrook



Category: The Hobbit (Jackson Movies), The Hobbit - All Media Types, The Hobbit - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Alternate Universe - Thorin Lives, Bilbo is too Nice to Throw his Problems on Someone Else, Emotionally Constipated Thorin, Friendship, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Minor Violence, Protective Thorin, Thorin is a Giant Marshmallow
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-07-07
Updated: 2015-07-22
Packaged: 2018-04-08 02:26:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 9,691
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4287189
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ravenrook/pseuds/Ravenrook
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A decade after the Battle of the Five Armies, Thorin ventures to visit Bilbo in Bag End. He finds a lonely and saddened hobbit, who can't seem to escape the ghosts of his past. Trouble comes to pass, and together the duo fight their demons.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Even Kings Can Have Holidays

**Author's Note:**

> Hello Comrade!  
> Here begins my very first published fanfic - I hope you find it pleasing. I will try to post weekly, and twice a week when I can. If you have questions, criticisms, suggestions or requests, don't hesitate to comment. Feedback is gold for aspiring authors. And with that, I give you Chapter One:

“But do not ask the price I paid,  
I must live with my quiet rage,  
Tame the ghosts in my head,  
That run wild and wish me dead” - Lover’s Eyes, Mumford & Sons.

Thorin cinched the drawstring of his tartan dressing-robe a little tighter against the preeminent chill. The leaves in the shire were goldening, and the temperature had fallen alongside them. Nothing to worry about, Bilbo had assured him. It barely got cold enough to frost the grass in Hobbiton, even in the depths of winter. Thorin thought of Erebor – its cold, grey slopes slicked with white snow, the greenstone face of mighty Thror bearing icicles like jewellery in its hair and glazing his carven eyes. He thought of the biting winds that blew from the north, and the coldsick that took the dwarves who could not last their watches on the battlements. And he remembered, fondly, the steady heat that pulsed within The Mountain’s walls. Its great iron heart beat steadily, manned by his people at their forges. The bellows breathed out warmth like vast red lungs, enough to thaw the very metal of their swords. The Shire was not a place of steel hearts and goldmasons, nor people prone to prompting battle. He supposed it made sense, for the mild weather to favour milder folk. And it wasn’t as if Bilbo didn’t deserve some comfort, after his ordeals. 

‘Tea?’ Thorin heard, as the hobbit emerged from the pantry laden with an array of teabags. ‘Camomile? Rose? Perhaps dandelion?’

‘Straight black will suffice,’ the dwarf muttered. ‘One sugar.’ Bilbo smiled broadly, as though this was a great concession on his part. The halfling had barely aged in the many years since the dwarf had seen him last – not in looks nor temperament. Thorin, however, could admit to a softening of the heart. He was changed, with not so much responsibility hefted on his shoulders. His people were returned to their home, prospering by its great hearths. For a decade, Thorin had kept peace, rebuilt old relationships shattered by greed. Erebor traded in its treasures and the skill of its occupants. He ruled now by virtue of a kind heart, diplomacy and tact. Unneeded, the hardened dwarf of days past was cast aside, and Thorin learnt to appreciate the smaller things, the things that so often he had wondered why Bilbo cherished. 

The halfling was busy over the teapot, humming a quiet tune. Thorin’s ears caught strains of a dwarfish melody, and it warmed his heart to think that the songs had stayed in Bilbo’s mind all these long years. The hobbit poured two cups of tea, stirred sugar into both, and returned to the table, passing one to Thorin.

‘So,’ Bilbo announced. ‘You ah, you left Fili in charge of The Mountain, then?’

Thorin allowed himself a small smirk. ‘It has been many years since you left us, Master Burglar. Fili is a different Dwarf to the impulsive boy you knew.’

‘Good to hear, good to hear.’

‘And Balin is there for his brain, Dwalin for brunt. They’ll keep him on the path. It was time my nephew learned the true trials of leadership. And time for me to have a holiday,’ the king confessed.

‘I quite agree,’ the hobbit said with a smile. He placed a warm hand on Thorin’s gloved one. ‘I truly am so very pleased to see you.’

‘And I you.’

They each sipped their tea in silence, mindful of the cold breeze snaking through the open window. Memories of past adventures surfaced in their minds, of dark nights bundled in furs, in elven dungeons and on icy lakes, in the grey depths of a hollow kingdom, in the crypts where so many of Thorin’s kin now lay. They felt the cold, and they remembered. In silence, they mourned. And the dwarf king wondered, how long had Bilbo suffered his grievances alone? No shortage of ghosts went with him when he left The Mountain, and there was not a soul in Hobbiton of the temperament to condone such wild ventures, or to commiserate the consequences. Thorin’s eyes wandered the small, homey room, trying to glimpse the life that its walls were witness to. 

A long scratch in the wooden table caught the dwarf’s eye and he ran a calloused thumb over it. Bilbo was too careful with his furniture to cause such damage, or to leave it unrestored. And he rarely had any visitors. 

‘Did a dwarf leave this?’ Thorin asked. 

‘Bofur, I believe.’ There was an unexpected fondness in Bilbo’s eyes at the admission. 

‘You could have it polished out.’

‘I wouldn’t, though.’ The hobbit swilled the dregs in the bottom of his cup, his eyes suddenly shadowed. ‘There’s a bend in that chair’s leg from Bombur, and Gloin scuffed up my floor just there with his boot spikes. And… and…’ Bilbo’s eyebrows drew together so tightly that they almost touched, and his lips pulled down at the corners very sharply, as if his eyes had suddenly started to burn. Thorin recognized the expression, and wished that his small friend might unburdened himself. Too many years he had paid homage to memories, held onto these shadows of grief. 

‘Over there, on the wall, there’s a heel print from Kili’s boot. And I think he made this dent with his tankard. And you know, my mother’s glory box just hasn’t been the same since he wiped his feet on it.’ 

The little hobbit hole suddenly seemed much littler and much colder than a moment ago. Thorin felt his face tighten and his heart descend into his stomach. But he had not grown so soft as to shed tears. He had not grown weak enough to whimper like a babe at his loss. Instead, the king spoke to the empty night and avoided the burglar’s eyes. 

‘Fili still misses him terribly. He will be a great King, but never the ruler he might have been with his brother at his side.’

Bilbo stared solemnly out the window, at the lights twinkling dully in other, warmer hobbit-holes. Then, quite out of the blue, he announced, ‘Thorin, tomorrow we should go fishing.’

‘Fishing.’

‘Yes, yes, we really ought too. It’s not a common pastime around here, and going alone never seems to be as much fun. I’d love to try it with company.’

Thorin’s frown deepened, and he fingered the gouge in the tabletop once more. Was this how the halfling dealt with his grief? Keeping the house cold, and letting the wind whip through it as if to blow all troubles away, distracting himself at any niggling thought of sadness with lonely activities? It could not be healthy, especially for a creature so small, and so kind in disposition.

‘I will go fishing with you,’ the dwarf conceded, under suspicions that Bilbo would go alone regardless. ‘And you will tell me what you have done with yourself since we parted.’ 

‘Might I hear tales of Erebor, as well?’ The hobbit spoke, suddenly hopeful. 

‘Master Burglar,’ said Thorin, ‘to them you would be most entitled.’


	2. Even Kings Can Go Fishing

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Thorin attempts to scope out Bilbo's emotional state, and almost loses him in the process.

“Roll away your stone, I'll roll away mine  
Together we can see what we will find  
Don't leave me alone at this time  
For I am afraid of what I will discover inside.”

-  _Roll Away Your Stone,_ Mumford & Sons.

Bilbo Baggins had a very little boat, which he kept in his garden and had once used as a bed for his pumpkin plants. Its hull was painted a quince yellow and splotched with ragged, wormeaten patches. Its seats were well worn and sunken about their middles, its oarhandles rife with splinters, and its rudder, crumpled underneath as if damaged by rocks. How it hadn’t sunk and drowned the small fellow was a mystery to Thorin. As was how he’d managed to drag the vessel down to the river, a good long distance away, with his own two scrawny little arms. But there was a spirit to the burglar that never ceased to amaze him. If Bilbo wished for the boat to be in the water badly enough, then into the water it would go.

With a dwarf on hand, he imagined the journey went smoother and less arduously than usual. Thorin carried the craft over his head, bearing the weight with his burly arms. Bilbo went before him dragging oars that were taller than himself. They must have made a spectacle, Thorin thought. Hobbits weren’t accustomed to looking out their windows and finding a dwarf in full furs with a rotting rowboat on its head. What very odd folk they were – so docile, so content with their lot. So very apart from his restless burglar.

The cold breeze kept up down by the water. It cut the surface of the river into thin ripples, sending them scattered into the reeds like the ranks of a broken army. Dragonflies sparkled like jewels of fire and ice on daystrum petals fluttering in the weak sun. So peaceful and clean it all was with its backdrop of green hills and spreading oaks. The dwarf breathed the full, fresh air and all its scents of baking bread and earth and pollen and flowing water – far from the smells of dirt and flame that intertwined and unraveled through his days in Erebor like a single, endless thread.

Thorin grunted as he heaved the boat from his shoulders and onto the small, sandy crescent of shore. It was clearly made for two quite tiny folk.

‘I’m not sure this vessel will bear my weight,’ he cautioned. ‘I am no hobbit in stature.’

‘Nonsense,’ the halfling scoffed. ‘But do take off your coat, it likely weighs as much as I do.’ Bilbo chuckled as Thorin cast off his furs. In just tunic and leathers, and with no sword at his hip, he felt exposed, and it was only the sweet scents of Shire grass that reminded him where he was – not a harsh place but a peaceable one.

‘You’ll have to pop in first I think,’ the hobbit said. ‘Else your weight will tip us both out.’ Thorin scowled at the mention of his weight. Fili had grown fond of poking fun at his Uncle’s middle-aged spread. Thorin couldn't help it - taking time to enjoy the small pleasures in life meant a lot of eating. And his kingly duties involved a lot less rigorous exercise than in his past.  

The dwarf clambered onto the lumpy rear bench, clutching at its sides as the craft rocked alarmingly. Dwarves were not partial to water. In large boats he had often fared quite well, but the river was a lot closer when crouched in this miniature version, and Thorin had never truly grasped the concept of swimming. He hid his discomfort from Bilbo, however, as it wasn’t an overly regal worry.

The halfling pushed the boat off from the shore with surprising ease, and leapt the distance into the stern. He landed so nimbly that Thorin appreciated all over again the lightness of the creature’s step. A long while it had been since those feet had borne the hopes of his company on their backs, as the burglar sneaked and stole about beneath the nose of Smaug the terrible. It had likely been an age since anyone else had appreciated them either. Here in The Shire, Bilbo was just a Baggins, of Bag End. Perhaps slightly less respectable than once before, but in the eyes of his friends here - no different than the day he'd left. He would always be Mr Baggins to them. Not a burglar, not a hero, not the kindly child of the west the king had come to know. Just Baggins. Just ordinary.  

As if guessing the nature of Thorin's thoughts, Bilbo eagerly said - 

‘Off on another adventure! What fun. Have you ever been fishing before?’

‘I've never had the chance,’ the king answered. As he rowed them out into the middle of the river, Bilbo explained the intricacies of the sport. He pulled two thick sticks wrapped in twine from his pack, and a paper parcel, which held inside a mass of wriggling worms.

‘Bait,’ Bilbo declared, holding one up. He unwound a section of his twine, revealing a folded tin hook at its end. When the worm had been threaded on, he passed the stick to Thorin. ‘You’ve got to unwind it, and cast it out into the water, and with any luck you’ll catch us our dinner.’

\- o -

After a good while of quiet, fruitless fishing, Bilbo piped up in his soft voice, ‘tell me about The Mountain, Thorin. I do wish to know what became of everyone.’

Thorin sighed and tugged on his line, hoping to interest some form of water-born beast. He’d expected fishing to be a little more exciting. Instead, it seemed much like other hobbit pastimes – in that it involved plenty of time for social chatter or periods of calm contemplation.

‘I’ll give you one story of mine for each story of yours,’ the dwarf countered, hoping to hear to that there had been some happiness in the halfling’s heart since that fateful Durin’s Day.

Bilbo looked slightly put out, but said to Thorin, ‘fair enough. Only if you go first, though. I want to hear about your kingdom.’ He uttered the last word with an odd quirk to his voice. ‘There’ve been no more dreadful battles I hope.’

‘Not since we drove the last of the orcs from our land. We are at peace, though our prosperity did not come easily.’

He spun a tale for Bilbo then, as they snacked on hunks of cheese and soft bread. Thorin told of the corruption of the Long Lake as Smaug’s immense corpse decomposed in its shallows. From the mountain, the dwarves would gaze out over the water and see it all – the black, armoured mound near the eastern shore and the bands of ruddy water streaking like infected wounds towards the River Running. The fish fled downstream or washed ashore in swathes of dead and things were harder on the dwarves and the people of Laketown, who had little livestock between them. Trading with the elves was the only means open to them, and it had irked Thorin to no end, seeing dwarven jewels in Thranduil’s coveting hands.

But as many months passed, the taint faded from the water. There was a brightness to the sun and a glow in the stars that had once seemed stifled. Birds began to nest again on the shores. The people of Laketown took the gold that was promised them and departed to rebuild their home. Some remained, led by Bard the Bowman, and set about restoring the legendary city of Dale with Thorin’s freely given gold. And all the while, dwarves flocked back to The Lonely Mountain. Some were returning home, others discovering a home they had never known. The great forges of Erebor were relit, the hammers taken up once more. Glowing with light and filled with bellowed song, the grey halls regained what had withered in the long absence of all hope.

The king spoke all of this in a sort of reverie, the fishing line sitting slack in his idle hands. At a certain point, he seemed to realise that his tale had stretched for far too long, and abruptly stopped.

‘I do believe you owe me a story of your own now,’ he said.

‘Quite,’ replied the hobbit with smile. ‘It gladdens my heart to hear that affairs were settled so well – eventually anyway. You’ve been a good king, Thorin.’

The dwarf felt his eyes darken for the briefest moment. Something twinged deep within his chest. He stretched, thinking it just a stiff muscle.

‘A story, a story,’ Bilbo muttered, wriggling his nose. ‘I don’t have any stories. At least none about The Shire. We’re quite boring really. And you know, if you’re looking for an exciting holiday, we’re going to have to go at least as far as Bree.’

‘Start at the very beginning then, if you can think of nothing else.’

‘The beginning? You mean when I came back from The Mountain.’ Bilbo began to reel in his line, though nothing seemed to be hooked on it. ‘I suppose that is entertaining enough.' And he told Thorin of dashing through crowds of merrily gossiping hobbits, his pack jangling loudly; of leaping over children and barrows of vegetables and piles of washing. He told the king of when he clapped eyes on Lobelia Sackville-Baggins, with her claws on his prized silverware collection and marched boldly up to the auctioneer, demanding that all of his belongings be returned to his house, for he was very much alive and still very much belonging of them.

Thorin found the dispossession endlessly amusing, especially when Bilbo muttered that he was still missing several of his favourite forks. The hobbit laughed until his breaths turned ragged, and it seemed to Thorin the sound of one who had not known humour in a very long time, and had quite forgotten what to do with it. It was still a merry laugh, however, and the king would hear it more often if there were a way. 

They were chuckling amiably together when a sudden, sharp jolting in Thorin’s hands bid the dwarf rise abruptly to his feet, hauling on his fishing line with ferocious fervour. 

‘I think our dinner has arrived, Master Baggins,’ he announced. The boat rocked violently as the fish fought to dive downwards, but Thorin planted his feet in a battle stance and heaved with all his might. Slowly, a pale, scaled body grew visible through the choppy surface. ‘What do I do, once it gets to be near us?’ Thorin called to the hobbit, who had stopped laughing. There was no immediate answer. ‘Do I bring it into the boat?’ The quiet slapping of water against the keel was all that met his ears. Instinct whispered to him that something was wrong.

Dropping the makeshift fishing reel, the dwarf spun around to find the boat ominously empty. There was no place the hobbit could have gone but into the water. Could he swim? It seemed unlikely. Terror stabbed through Thorin at the thought. 

‘Bilbo!’ the king roared, listening madly for a splash or splutter. With the vessel bucking madly beneath him, he leant over the bow to look down into the water. The hobbit was far below and sinking fast, his eyes staring widely up at the dwarf through meters of murky water. Thorin was brought back to another time, decades ago, when a slightly younger face had swung in pressing darkness, the hobbit’s fingers desperately clinging to a slippery cliff-face. As he had then, the dwarf king abandoned all thoughts of his own safety. He leapt out of the boat, suddenly glad for the lack of his furs. As the cool water closed over Thorin’s head, his stomach jolted strangely. This was a different sensation to the sudden blotting out of the sky by rock and earth. The weight of water on his shoulders was not alike to the threat of tonnes of stone hanging above. It was immediate, and alarming.

Thorin struck out with his feet and found his sodden boots unbearably heavy. Peering into the gloom with stinging eyes, he searched for any trace of Bilbo, discovering it in a swirl of walnut hair far below. If he stopped struggling, Thorin easily sank, down into a place of dimming light and screaming lungs. He fumbled blindly, fingers grasping at the hobbit’s pea-green coat and yanking upwards. But the water thwarted them. It reached up from the darkness with frigid hands, to pull at his ankles and force its fingers into his mouth. It wrapped his braids around his neck and numbed his eyes to blindness. It was cold. So cold and heavy.

They would die here, he realised. Their bodies would decompose in the river like Smaug’s and his kingdom would falter, never knowing the fate of their king. And Bilbo… Bilbo would never get the chance to be that whistling, cheerful hobbit that Thorin had once know.

Frantically, the dwarf thought back to anything he had ever been told about swimming, and it came to him that he ought to kick his legs. At first, nothing happened. They only sank and sank down further into darkness. And then, as the muscles in his calves stung and smarted and his vision sparkled, they began to move upwards. The light grew stronger, the current less fierce. Bilbo’s unconscious weight was heavier than any axe or broadsword he had ever hefted and it took everything that Thorin had to raise both of their heads above the water.

The dwarf drew long gasps of air as he paddled them to shore. Never had he been so glad to feel the cruel whip of cold wind on his cheeks. He was alive. They would live. Thorin felt a surge of relief the likes of which he hadn’t known in a decade, since that first glimpse of Erebor as it shone in the sunrise. And as he dragged Bilbo’s little body ashore, the halfling awoke with a sudden almighty jerk, emptying all of the riverwater from his insides onto the king’s sodden breeches. Thorin clapped him on the back, arm-muscles shaking with cold and fatigue, then collapsed onto his haunches in the sand. 

‘You sure know how to pick your adventures,’ he remarked.

‘Adventures,’ muttered the hobbit weakly. ‘If you weren’t around, I wouldn’t have survived any of them.’ He looked up at Thorin with brown and bloodshot eyes, his hair straggling over his forehead in a bemused kind of way, and promptly, without a single word of warning, fainted.

\- o -

Some time later, Thorin retrieved his cloak from further up the bank and brought it back to Bilbo, wrapping the little hobbit up inside the warm layers of furs. He splashed water on the halfling’s face, and when Bilbo remained unresponsive, hefted him up into his arms and proceeded to carry him back to Bag End. As he walked, rosy faces pressed themselves against circular window panes to stare at them. They appeared equal parts curious, scared and confused. In all likelihood, he mused, they were thinking that the dwarf had done something to injure Bilbo. Thorin tried not to let that bother him. He thought only of Bree, and of how it wouldn’t be necessary to go there in search of an eventful holiday. Trouble seemed to follow the pair wherever they went.                  


	3. Even Kings Can Have Nightmares

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which we learn more about what haunts our intrepid companions, and find out the consequences of Bilbo's accidental swim.

“Spare me your judgements and spare me your dreams  
Cause recently mine have been tearing my seams  
I sit alone in this winter clarity which clouds my mind  
Alone in the wind and the rain you left me.”

_-    Thistle and Weeds_ , Mumford & Sons.

 

Snowstars drifted in the air. Flashes of silver – deadly blades, swung in arcs through them, startling the flakes, breaking what silence they brought. It was loud, deafeningly so. It was blood and metal, charcoal and mud and cold. Thorin’s breath steamed as it heaved out of him, an orcish elbow driving itself into his gut. Raising Orcrist, he hacked at the filth, shoving the brute to the ground with his sword buried to the hilt in its chest. The thing burbled, black blood pouring from its mouth – gallons and gallons of it. It flowed towards Thorin’s feet, shimmering and then transmuting, into a slithering _serpent_ made of molten gold. The orc’s dying shrieks mingled with Thorin’s snarl of pain as the snake coiled its searing skin around his legs. Its tail ensnared his chest, and singed away his clothes. Like a needle, it stabbed through his skin, and like a sword it slid between his ribs, burning through flesh and through blood. And he screamed as it pierced his heart. He screamed until his voice broke and knees gave out and his vision faded away.

\- o -

When he opened his eyes Thorin was at Ravenhill, watching Fili swing dual swords, the prince’s golden hair streaming in the icy wind. Kili handled his broadsword with less skill but more passion, sending orc heads tumbling onto the blood-slicked ice. And Thorin felt the familiar weight of Orcrist in his hand, as surely as the shadow that lay over him, cast by Azog the Defiler. As his nephews flanked his sides, the dwarf king levelled his sword at the towering pale orc. 

‘Today, this ends,’ he bellowed. ‘Today, _you die._ ’

They were into the fray then – Azog with a contingent of smaller Gundabad orcs, and the three sons of Durin, weary and battered but determined to a fault. Thorin met the blows of Azog’s scimitar unrelentingly, slashing at the monster’s exposed thighs and chest. The smaller orcs shrieked and stumbled around the pair, falling at the warm bite of his nephews’ swords, until...

Cutting through the frigid air, Fili’s pained shout rang off of the glacier. Echoing after came the sound of a sword clattering on the ice. Thorin’s head turned instinctively, to find the prince kneeling, blood gushing from a gap in the armour of his elbow. The three remaining orcs bore down on his nephews, and Kili placed himself protectively over his brother, slashing madly to hold his ground against their foes.

It was then that Azog seized his chance, amid the king’s distraction. Thorin saw the scimitar fly back and plummet down, and he barely caught the blow on the edge of his blade. The force of it threw him to the ice, driving the air from his lungs and Orcrist from his hand. The king backpedalled towards Fili and Kili, as Azog loomed with his bladed arm glowing in the cold light.  

‘Now _you_ die,’ he growled barbarously. The giant orc raised his scimitar and held it, point down, poised to drive straight into Thorin’s pounding heart.

‘No!’ came the shout from behind him. Fili skidded across the ice, his right arm hanging limply at his side, and threw himself desperately in front of Thorin, parrying Azog’s downward thrust with his left-handed sword. The pale orc roared and responded with a swipe so ferocious it tore the prince’s blade away. Nephew and uncle there lay on the freezing ground, defenceless, as the third son of Durin made his stand.

Kili took up Fili’s fallen right-hand sword and hurled it towards the pale orc’s head. It struck him in the shoulder, sinking right through the flesh and hitting bone. Its impact barely drew a grunt. The black-haired dwarf then rushed at Azog, his face twisted into a resolute snarl. 

Kili had always been the most reckless, the most impulsive, had always let his emotions drive his actions over reason. And he had always been loyal, to the point of irrationality. Thorin called out to him, shouted that it was folly. But Kili never faltered. He just kept running, his sword held out like a lance. And he ran, and he leapt over his fallen brother, and he charged right onto Azog’s scimitar, all the while driving his sword up with all his might into the pale orc’s gut.

‘You will not harm them!’ Thorin heard him yell, beneath Azog’s mighty shriek. And as his nephew slid from the great beast’s bloody blade, the king leapt to his feet, regaining his sword. 

Thorin raised Orcrist, and as it rose, it seemed to slice through time itself. For a moment, the snowstars hung unmoving in the air, and Kili lay against Fili’s leg, his lips shining like wine-red jewels.

It was only a moment, but in it, all the rage of the wronged dwarves of Erebor came to his aid, and burned in his eyes as bright as dragonfire. The King under the Mountain considered Azog, and the black blood trickling from the wound in the beast’s abdomen. Then he bellowed, and with one final, solemn swing, sent the foe’s head tumbling to the ice.

The monstrous commander was dead, but victory did nothing to settle the swooping, sickening plummeting of the king’s stomach. For his kin Thorin rejoiced, and for his nephew he wept, silent tears transforming into sobs as the Great Eagles arrived overhead, too late.

He staggered to the prone bodies of his sister-sons. Fili held Kili against his chest, his one good hand pressed against his little brother’s fatal wound. Blood streaked the prince’s golden hair, and he lifted his head to meet his king’s gaze. Beyond the anguish and the agony, something uncoiled. The golden snake was in Fili’s eyes,

rising out of Fili’s eyes,

and striking Thorin down…

Even as he woke to the comforting lamp-lit glow of Bag End.

\- o -

Bilbo was perched on the edge of his armchair, in a simple shirt and loose pants, while a frigid wind whipped through the house. Every door and window was thrown open and the sky outside brooded with thunderheads outlined by the moon.

‘Bilbo,’ Thorin called, hoarsely. The hobbit’s face was deeply lined, his eyes shaded in a darkness even deeper than the night.

He whispered to the king, ‘you were screaming… in your sleep.’

Thorin tried to grasp at the fading threads of his nightmare, but they disappeared into the greater tapestry of his thoughts. All he could recall was blood on steel, and gold.

‘S’nothing,’ he told the hobbit. ‘Why’re the windows open?’ The dwarf drew his covers up further against the stream of frigid air as Bilbo rose and began to pace. 

‘Thorin, I feel _hot_ ,’ he huffed. ‘And I shouldn’t be. I’ve been cold and – and shivering all afternoon, and now I’m burning up.’ The little fellow was growing more flustered with each passing moment. He strode to the bedroom window, gently closed it and shuffled back, furiously wringing his hands. He seemed almost in a trance, his brow glistening with sweat, eyes sliding blankly across the walls. A heavy weight of dread slowly settled itself in the dwarf king’s stomach.  

‘Bilbo, this is very important, and you must listen to me,’ Thorin said to the madly pacing hobbit. ‘How do you feel?’

‘How do I –’ the halfling halted abruptly and sank down onto the edge of the dwarf’s bed. ‘You don’t think that there could be something wrong with me, do you, something bad?’

‘I can’t be sure until I hear what ails you,’ Thorin spoke solemnly, though the tightening sensation in his chest told him otherwise. Fever was just the beginning of the sickness which he prayed to Mahal that Bilbo did not have.

‘Well I – it’s very simple really. I am rather hot, and I can’t seem to get un-hot no matter what I do. It started just before in my sleep. I was having the most awful dream about those trolls cooking me over their fireplace – then I woke up and I felt I _was_ cooking.’

‘And your chest?’ the dwarf inquired.

‘My chest? I hadn’t thought about it. I do suppose it feels rather odd – tight, like my lungs are half their size.’

‘And have you been coughing?’

‘No no, no coughing here,’ he said very quickly. ‘Would you mind telling me just what it is that you think I have?’

Thorin reached for his dressing-robe and wrapped it about himself before wriggling out from beneath the covers. He stood up, taking Bilbo by the elbow, and escorted the protesting hobbit down the hall and back into the master bedroom. Depositing him on the bed, the dwarf piled blankets over the halfling’s shivering form. Then he seated himself in the armchair by the nightstand and proceeded to tell the story behind his concern.  

‘There is a sickness well known to us of the mountains. It appears when winter rolls across the Long Lake and creeps into our halls. The young and old are most vulnerable. We of Durin’s folk call it coldsick – the men of Laketown know it as drowned-man’s death. Cold is the cause of it, and fluid in the lungs.’

Bilbo watched Thorin with slitted eyes from below his blankets. The sound of his breathing was a shallow whisper that made the king nervous.

‘Many a dwarf has succumbed to this illness in the halls of Erebor. I will not have you do the same.’

‘This is because I fell out of the boat isn’t it,’ the hobbit grouched. ‘All I wanted was to catch some dinner, and now I’ve got some kind of deadly illness.’

Thorin listened as the halfling continued to grumble his bad luck, and just quietly, he thought that perhaps the near-drowning was less the cause and more the final straw. Bilbo’s spirit had been dampened for too long, and his body was sick of languishing in the cold and the darkness. This was a protest. If he was to heal, the hobbit would need more than herbs and tonics – he would need a lightening of the heart.

‘The young and the fit of us always come out of it none the worse,’ Thorin lied. ‘You must keep warm, even when you feel hot, and drink as much as you can.’

‘I just can’t believe this,’ Bilbo spoke, and the dwarf saw a wetness gathering in his eyes – so much emotion trapped within, a decade’s worth of pain.

‘Go to sleep Bilbo,’ Thorin said quietly. ‘You need your rest.’

The hobbit rearranged his pillows as if preparing for slumber, but he quickly paused and looked up at his friend.

‘Your nightmare,’ he ventured.

‘Is not of your concern,’ the dwarf answered with a small smile.

‘It is, Thorin.’ The hobbit sat up. ‘You’re not just anyone. You’re… important, to me. And I don’t like that you might be distressed, whatever the cause. If there’s anything I can do – ’

‘You would not hesitate to do it, I know. There is a great kindness in you. I would not have it dampened by my own troubles.’ Bilbo looked as though he wanted to argue, but frowned instead and wriggled his little nose. Thorin put a hand on the hobbit’s shoulder and gently pressed him back against the mattress.

‘You are far from well. Go to rest now, and I will see you in the morning.’

‘Fine,’ the hobbit agreed, snuggling underneath his blankets. ‘But don’t think I’m forgetting about it.’

‘Of course not,’ Thorin grumbled as he settled back in the armchair. There was no use in returning to sleep. More troubling than any nightmare, the anxiety in the pit of his stomach swirled and crashed with the ferocity of storming waves. The dwarf would spend the night watching Bilbo for signs of a worsening fever, his mind filled with the greying memories of cold, blueish lips and dwarflings vomiting blood. He would make a list of the herbs needed for tonics and wonder if hobbits had many skilled healers. Dawn would greet him like a shard of golden glass in Bag End’s eerie quiet.


	4. Even Kings Can Feel Small

 

“And I will not tell, the thoughts of hell  
That carried me home, from the Holland road  
With my heart like a stone, and I put up no fight  
To your callous mind, and from your corner you rose to cut me down,  
You cut me down.”

_-    Holland Road_ , Mumford and Sons 

 

As dawn threw its yellow fingers over the windowsill, Bilbo stirred in his sleep. A wave of heat rolled off of the bed and broke against Thorin’s face. It stank of sickness and struggle. The king had been waiting, attentive on the edge of his seat, as the halfling lay for hours so still as to seem dead, but breathing shallowly all the same. And now, movement.

‘Bilbo,’ he whispered, nudging the hobbit’s arm. Blearily, those round, brown eyes blinked open and peered intently at Thorin. A look of apprehension then wrought itself across Bilbo’s features.

‘I am going to vomit,’ he announced, clapping two hands over his mouth. The king dashed about the room searching for some kind of container, his eyes landing on an ochre vase. He hastily fetched it, but Bilbo squawked from between his fingers –

‘No! Not that one. That is my grandmother’s; I mustn’t despoil it.’

The little fellow then vaulted himself out of bed, and in his nightclothes bolted for the kitchen. An unpleasant retching sound followed soon after.  

Thorin tarried in the bedroom for a long while, to give the poor fellow some privacy; he understood the shame of others seeing you at your weakest. But when he entered the kitchen it was to comfort his friend, who was so shaky he could barely walk. Surreptitiously, the king checked in the sink, and breathed a sigh of relief that no blood had joined the hobbit’s stomach contents in their fast evacuation from his body. From what he knew of coldsickness, vomiting blood was the red banner that preceded death. If he could keep Bilbo from that, perhaps the illness would burn through him and pass without too great a harm. But through Thorin ran a deep vein of doubt, for he’d known only one dwarf to survive in such a way – his own nephew. And a whole lot of good that did him in the end; he was entombed in the rock like all the rest.

Bilbo had to be helped to his seat, but ate all of the bacon, the slices of tomato, the eggs and the toast that Thorin cooked over the fireplace. He drank two cups of tea as well, while the dwarf interrogated him about his symptoms (the king had a strong black coffee, with three sugars quietly slipped in). Of his ailments Bilbo named many: first, the blazing fever and the terrible chills; then and aches all over in his joints and muscles, as if he’d been bludgeoned by a troll; there was the cough too, which had arrived in force since Bilbo’s waking, and the way his heart raced so fast he feared it would all of a sudden explode inside his chest.

But despite it all, the little fellow seemed determined to go about his normal business – straightening out the pantry, darning a pillowcase, baking roundbreads. The day was a circus act of distractions, with the hobbit never settling. This restlessness seemed now to be as permanent a part of Bilbo as his twitchy nose, and his penchant for drinks made from boiled plants. Thorin thought he understood – if you stopped moving for too long, certain things caught you up. So he kept quiet and left the hobbit to his business, trying his best not to fret over the hacking cough that often sounded from various rooms of Bag End.

It was only once Bilbo had put on his travelling cloak, lit his pipe, and made to walk out the door that Thorin had finally had enough. He stepped around the hobbit and let his broad frame block the doorway. Bilbo began to bluster about this and that – how he was only going to fetch dinner, getting some fresh air, and wouldn’t some fish be nice, after their unsuccessful fishing venture.

‘You have a serious illness,’ the king admonished, as Bilbo began to cough so hard he had to lean against the wall to steady himself. ‘I will not let you go gallivanting about in the cold, risking your life, all for the sake of some fish.’

Then he took Bilbo by the arm and steered him towards the warmth of the hearth. The halfling continued to protest all the way back to his armchair, spouting excuses. He seemed to think that no hobbit would sell to a ‘giant, hulking, hunk of dwarf, with that bushy beard, and those _eyebrows_ , my word.’ Thorin merely jangled his coin pouch and smirked.

‘I will see you upon nightfall. And you, burglar, will stay in bed until I return. No smoking, no gardening, no cleaning. Sleep, read and drink your tea.’ He strode towards the door and upon its threshold, glanced over his shoulder, to see Bilbo swaddled in blankets, his golden curls tousled, cheeks pink, and with that tenacious glint in his eyes. ‘If you’re out of bed when I get back, Mahal help you.’

But his heart was gladdened to know that something of stubbornness remained in the hobbit, even if it was stone more than the fire that once it had been. And so Thorin set off for the marketplace with less of a shadow on his mind, and more hope in his heart.

*

Purchasing the items from Bilbo’s grocery list was less of a problem than either of them had anticipated. The hobbits were wary of the fierce-looking dwarf, and many made it plain that he was unwelcome as the king approached. A smile, however, and a hearty jangle of his coin purse, seemed to tempt them past the possible danger. Many were glad to pick out their finest produce for him, and Fisherhobbit Dingle even bundled in an extra fish, ‘just for the pleasure your company, Mr. Dwarf.’ In fact, Thorin was in such a good mood that he went out of his way to find the dried dandelion heads Bilbo had wanted for his teas, even though it took him until he had almost given up to stumble upon the stall. Then on his merry way back to Bag End, he treated himself by dropping in to The Green Dragon – for his first good ale in months.

Inside, the bar was bursting with chatter. Lunch had been served, and the drinks were going out faster than flagons could be filled. Thorin found hobbit mead less than half the strength of its dwarvish counterpart, but he enjoyed its summery taste, and the way the heat spread out in his chest like a sunning cat. After many flagons, and with his mood soaring gaily, he took a look about the pub. There were many strange folk there on that day, but of them all, the largest caught the king’s eye.

At a corner table, three men sat – looking so out of proportion with the hobbit-sized furniture that their very presence threatened. Two of the figures were shorter as the race of men goes, and broader across-ways. Their skin was yellowish and sagging, hair well-greased, and eyes filmy – in the way that eyes go after a long while barred from sunlight. The third man was taller and wore a cloak of dusty, dark brown cotton, and its hood threw purple shadows over his features. He seemed not so intent on drinking, and had not spoken a word, even as his companions yabbered and jostled each other, spilling their mead and gesturing in Thorin’s direction. As the king listened into their conversing, he felt his blood begin to run hot in his veins.  It did not take long – especially after his many drinks – for the whispers of ‘crackpot king,’ and ‘hopeless with a sword,’ to incite Thorin to march boldly over to them. He wouldn’t suffer such slander, especially from those who looked to be prison runaways. 

‘Have you something to say to me?’ he growled at the cretins, causing them to glare at him with their glassy eyes.

‘Oh!’ one of them exclaimed, ‘looky here, he’s come to put us right, aye? For slanderin’ your names your highness. Well we’ve got a bone ter pick with you.’

The other short man broke in then, with a leering smile full of teeth like yellow pebbles. Everything about the men disgusted Thorin, but nothing more so than their foolish words.

‘Is you a loony?’ the smiler asked.

Then the first man broke in –

‘ _I_ heard you was loony. Way I heard it – you set your dragon on that lake city and watched it burn, smilin’ from up in your mountain. Kids a’screaming, women burnin,’ and you was cacklin' –

‘We heard you was sick, like a _mad dog_.’

Thorin snarled and let his deep voice roll over them like thunder, crashing upon their ears.

‘Do you insult a king, and expect not to pay with your head?’

One of the short men made to lunge from his seat, but at that moment all the candles in the pub snuffed out and the sun was all at once wrapped away in clouds. In the dim light, a different voice spoke – a voice soft as the breeze that had graced the mountain in the hours before Smaug’s ruinous descent. It was ice and sleet, with a promise of fire.

‘That is quite enough.’

There was a moment of tense silence, and the king turned to the hooded third man. From within the shadows, dark eyes flashed in Thorin’s direction.    

‘Though I too have a quarrel with you. For what kind of a king wallows in his treasures while men are roasted alive, his kin butchered by orcs, whole towns turned to rubble and ash? What kind of a king,’ it repeated, standing slowly, ‘builds his kingdom with gold paid for by the blood of his own brothers, on the bones of the fallen he failed? I’ll tell you,’ the figure seethed, and leant down to whisper in the dwarf’s ear – ‘A _coward_.’

Thorin drew himself up to his full height, blood pounding in his ears. This soft-spoken stranger dared chastise him, as if he were a petty, mewling child. The dwarf wrapped his fingers silently around Orcrist’s pommel, hidden as it was under his cloak, and locked eyes with his foolish foe.  

‘What would you know of bravery, _bottom-dweller_?’ He began in a low rumbling snarl, a precursor to the booming tone in which he bellowed, ‘I am Thorin, son of Thrain and King under the Mountain, who knows well the weight of his crown. And _you_ would berate _me_ – you who knows not the perils of kingship, nor what it is to be cast from your home!’ Rage crested within Thorin as his nephew’s broken body flickered on the screen of his closed eyelids, followed by Gloin’s, Ori’s, Bofur’s and Nori’s. The hooded man held his ground as the king advanced, shoulders shaking with the force of his fury. ‘Gold can be cursed, a dragon’s wroth misplaced. What is right can look like a mistake - yet you dare to judge me for every life that went to waste. Who are you, that would so slander the ruler of the dwarves of Erebor?’

The stranger paused, then threw back his hood with swift grace. His face was fair and youthful, skin pale as milk, with pointed ears and long hair dark like ink. Yet his eyes held a depth of anger that reared back through centuries.

‘I am Bregedon, once son of Corchon, once an elf of the woodland realm.’

Thorin yanked Orcrist from its sheath, sure that the elf was about to attack. He heard the pub emptying behind them – every small hobbit soul fleeing the troublingly eventful circumstance. Even Bregedon’s squat companions edged their own way towards the door – but the elf leapt towards the king, nimbly retrieving a finely-wrought dagger from his boot. In an instant, the blade was pressed against the dwarf’s windpipe. He felt its sting, but not its bite. Bregedon had stayed his hand, for he seemed still to have much to say.

‘My king has warmed to you, this past decade,’ the elf announced. ‘Would you happen to know why?’ The knife shied back a little, so that Thorin could swallow without lacerating himself. He took the chance to spit on the creature’s boots.

‘I imagine The Elvenking is of a milder temper than yourself, and lesser in his ignorance.’

‘Ignorance,’ the elf sneered. ‘It is Thranduil who is ignorant, in such granting of forgiveness. I would not be so quick to pardon a gluttonous swine. You gave him jewels, yes, as if that could pay for the blood we shed in your stead. I will not be _bought_ – not as you have done so much that should not be forgiven in the time before the end of this world. I would avenge my brothers, you see,’ he sliced into the soft skin at the corner of Thorin’s jaw. The king ground his teeth and thought to make a dashing move with Orcrist. But remembering Bilbo, alone and unwell, kept him from hasty action. Instead he raised his chin obstinately, cheeks flaming.

‘You would have my head, then.’

Bregedon’s smooth face twisted itself into an intense expression, reminiscent almost of anguish, and Thorin felt his grip shift on the dagger at his throat. The king prepared himself for that fast plunge, for a searing pain and a slow death. But it did not arrive. Instead, the elf appeared to be stealing himself to say something unsavoury.  

‘It is in my nature to heal, not kill,’ Bregedon confessed, lowering his dagger. Then a light leapt like a flame in his eyes and he spoke with a savage smile, ‘but I will teach you your lesson, all the same.’ And he grasped sharply Thorin’s beard – the long, lustrous beard which he had grown down to his waist, and with one wrenching swipe, shaved it off close at his chin, taking some of the skin too. It was not the cut that stung the dwarf king.

Bregedon withdrew his dagger and swept Thorin’s feet from under him, spitting out a lecture on honour. ‘Now you will know the shame which you seem so impassive to. You are king of longbeards no more.’ The elf tilted Thorin’s bare chin upwards with the toe of his boot. ‘You can thank me that you still have your life, and try to live it better from this day forth.’

As he left, Bregedon’s cloak scattered the remnants of Thorin’s beard across the floor. They blew into the King’s mouth and stung at his eyes, and he lay there unmoving for some time, letting them blow over him with his shoulders quietly trembling.

*

It felt like hours had passed before Thorin gathered the strength to pull himself off of the floor, though the bar was still empty and the sky outside still the same uniform grey. He shoved Orcrist back in its sheath and inspected his hands as they shook – half in undiluted rage and half in shock.

What the elf had said and done irked Thorin not just for the grief it caused him, but for its unjustness. Each cutting, verbal blow had sung of greed and idiocy, of an evil contempt for lives of lesser rank. Bregedon had called him down in the caste of a callous, cowardly niggard – and though the seeds of truth glinted here or there, Thorin felt in his heart that the judgement was unfair, for he had striven so hard to redeem his mistakes, and carried the burden of his losses without a sign of weakness or a complaint. He could not ignore the elf’s words, however, as he could not forget the stinging in his chin and the cold wind at his throat where there had once been none. Within him, a guilt and a hatred of his self rolled over like a cloud front; for the elf had torn open an old wound that had never fully healed. And the king dimly realised that in all of his fretting over Bilbo, he had not realised the storm growing within himself.  

_Bilbo_ – the dwarf’s stomach flipped as he remembered the hobbit alone in Bag End. If sickness had befallen him further – Thorin had been away for many hours, and now his own troubles would have to wait. He had to know that the halfling fared okay. 

With his temper still flaring in fits and starts and the loss of his beard weighing like a lead ball in his gut, Thorin tramped home through a light drizzle. He was pleased (or as close as he could be in such a state) to find the hobbit fast asleep in his bed, though still burning hotter than was healthy. The king then busied himself about making dinner – the wretched ovenplace frustrated him to no end, and he burned many of his fingers – and when the fish was ready woke Bilbo for supper.

The hobbit’s eyes widened and he made a little noise of discontent at the sight of Thorin’s mangled beard, but the two agreed not to discuss it until after eating, by which time Thorin had made several passing remarks at the nature of his encounter.

‘An elf waylaid me, in The Green Dragon,’ the king explained, as he curtly escorted Bilbo straight to bed (less an evening stroll and a game of chess).

‘An elf! In Hobbiton?’ The hobbit succumbed to a violent fit of coughing, and had to lean heavily against Thorin.  ‘That is… most unusual.’

‘Aye – he wore a hooded cloak, and hid himself amongst a party of men. I did not know his race until he revealed it.’

‘And how did this elf get the better of the great Thorin Oakenshield?’ Bilbo spoke it lightly, and likely he did not mean to be insensitive. He didn’t know what being a beardless dwarf meant, or how much Thorin had struggled to overcome the fear of being the villainous character Bregedon had cast him as. Innocent though the question was, it cut Thorin to the quick.

‘Would you rather I had tried to kill it, and been killed myself and left you here to die?’ The words had a biting edge, and he regretted them as soon as they left his tongue.

Bilbo only stammered in response. So Thorin waited until he was tucked snugly into his bed and then sat into the armchair to explain. He recounted everything that had occurred, from beginning to end, including every accusation of greed and malice and cowardice, with a face as stony as Thror’s great statue. The words tumbled from his mouth in a clipped tone – a recount, like the events he recalled had happened to someone else. But underneath, each sentence drove the sword a little deeper in his gut, choked his throat off a little more. Bilbo was a good audience, though he seemed to have behind frightened out of saying anything further. He mostly popped in with ‘oh dear,’ and ‘how terrible,’ and towards the end, many varied ways of asking if the king was okay. To these of course, he replied that he was fine.

 When Thorin was done the tale, he stretched nonchalantly, rubbing his palm over the uneven stubble at his chin, still caked as it was with blood.

‘I should probably clean this up,’ he stated. ‘Do you have a shaving blade of any sort?’

Bilbo frowned a pensive frown and wriggled his nose.

‘Shaving blades, hmm… I don’t have one, at any rate. Hobbits don’t tend to grow beards.’ And he mumbled a good bit about the Stoors having beards, and grumbled at how inconveniently far they were away. Thorin was not so concerned, though he would rather not try to shave himself with Orcrist.

‘Follow me,’ Bilbo then said as he clambered out of bed and wrapped a blanket around his shivering self. There was a lot of coughing as Thorin was lead to a small bathroom, where Bilbo opened a cupboard and pulled out some scissors. ‘Now sit down there and I shall fix you right up.’

Thorin went to grab the scissors, but the hobbit it fought him off.

‘You need to go back to bed,’ the king warned.

‘And I will, as soon as you don’t look like something that’s been half-chewed and spat out by a baby warg.’

Bilbo fetched a washer, wet it and gently dabbed at the raw, bloodied patch that Bregedon had grazed away.

‘I don’t know what to think to of this,’ Thorin mumbled, as the hobbit chopped through the larger chunks of hair at the edges of his jaw. The tightness had returned to his throat, as if cold hands were strangling him, and this time he could not push the feeling away. He felt as though his body was made of the thinnest, weakest metal, being hammered and hammered and hammered from the inside out, and what lurked within was so close to breaking down his walls. There was an aching, swelling tide in his lungs that made it hard to breath. And he wondered, just for a moment, whether it was worse to feel psychically this way, as Bilbo did, or to feel it in this new and terrible manner.

Then the halfling snipped through the very last tuft of his great beard, and Thorin’s walls did not fall down. He breathed out past the lump in his throat and let the torments fizzle into the yellow glow of the bathroom lantern. But all was done with the air of one who fights a beast that is too strong, only postponing the judgement for as long as he can. Though if he stayed like this, shallowly breathing, and watched the way the light glinted of the polished wood walls, and did not let his mind wander, he could keep himself from caving in.  

Bilbo merely sank onto the bench next to him and said nothing, as if understanding how tenuously the king was holding onto his pride. They sat there until the lantern burned low and Bilbo drifted to sleep against Thorin’s broad shoulder. Eventually he picked the little fellow up, wrapped as he was in his blanket like a little glow-worm, and took him back to his bed, before retreating to his own.

But Thorin did not sleep. You would expect such from a dwarf who felt so thoroughly abused. He worried at what his kin would make of him on his return home, less his regal beard. Perhaps they would put Fili upon the throne instead. There was no use in a beardless leader who could not command the respect of a two-year-old. And every time he close his eyes, he saw his glorious crown drenched in blood both black and red. He sat upon the throne in his blue cloak, with his feet resting on the corpses of man and dwarf and elf, and (if he let his mind relax) his eyes shone a covetous gold from beneath the hood, more evil than any shade of scarlet.

Thus Thorin stayed awake, too scared to face his demons.

 


End file.
